SW Ohio sixth-graders learn Heimlich move

Associated Press

CINCINNATI

The Heimlich maneuver, a well-known emergency technique for preventing suffocation when an airway becomes blocked by an object, is being taught to sixth-graders in a southwest Ohio school through a new curriculum that organizers eventually hope to roll out across the state and possibly the nation.

The Heimlich Heroes course teaches students the procedure and enables teachers to combine instruction in that safety technique with lessons in subjects including language arts, math, science and health.

The maneuver, which the now 92-year-old Dr. Henry Heimlich has been credited with developing in 1974, involves abdominal thrusts applied to a choking person in an effort to lift the diaphragm and force air from the lungs to dislodge any object. Heimlich estimates it has saved more than 100,000 choking victims in the U.S. since 1974, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

The doctor helped get the new course started recently at Bethany School, a private elementary school in the Cincinnati suburb of Glendale. About 30 sixth-graders are involved in the pilot program.

Heimlich told those students he developed the maneuver after reading accounts of people choking in restaurants, with many of them dying.

The doctor said he began experimenting on a laboratory dog, placing a tube down its throat and jamming a piece of meat in the tube. Heimlich reassured the students that the dog was asleep and was not harmed. He said he balled up his fists and pressed into the dog’s stomach and up against its diaphragm. The meat was forced out as the lungs were depressed, and the Heimlich maneuver came into existence.

Michelle Mellea is a sixth-grade teacher at Bethany who developed the curriculum under the sponsorship of the Deaconess Associations Foundation. She says the course tells students to not be afraid and that they “can save someone’s life.”

“All children want to be empowered and gain recognition for their abilities,” Mellea said.

The course is accompanied by posters, lesson plans and T-shirts that bear a crest surrounding an “H” that resembles Superman’s “S” and promotes self-esteem and responsibility, Mellea said. A practice doll is also included. It has a ribcage that mimics human anatomy and a mouth that expels a peanut-sized foam cushion when the maneuver is performed successfully.